Torrance-based group LiNK, the only nonprofit devoted to helping North Koreans escape the repressive dictatorship that rules the country, will holds a series of South Bay movie screenings beginning Friday.

A new 35-minute documentary called “Hiding” traces a treacherous rescue mission through China that North Koreans must make in a bid to find freedom. LiNK website

The free screening and subsequent audience discussion is designed to raise money and the visibility of both the issue and LiNK, which stands for Liberty in North Korea.

“Our tours are first and foremost awareness tours,” said Leah Garrard, a regional manager for the nonprofit. “Every tour we find people who don’t know what’s going on in North Korea.

“We’re attempting to redefine the North Korea crisis and try to shed light on the people of North Korea,” she added. “There are up to 300,000 North Korean refugees living in China so there are always refugees waiting for freedom.”

LiNK operates the only major shelter in Southeast Asia that assists North Koreans to settle in South Korea or the U.S. Since 2004, about 100 North Korean refugees have settled in the United States, including some in Torrance.

LiNK, which was founded in 2004, moved to Torrance last year, said spokeswoman Esther Lee.

Curiously, the group did not move to the South Bay because of the large number of Asians and Koreans in the area; it largely wanted out of the nation’s capital.

“In Washington, D.C., it’s all about advocacy – here we decided we can go back to the grass-roots and build more support,” Lee said, adding the group found relatively inexpensive office space in Torrance. “There’s no particular reason other than that.”

The movie tours are hosted by teams of college students – called nomads – that travel in a van for 10 weeks from screening to screening.

The goal is to put human faces on the stories of North Koreans who lack basic freedoms and often face starvation, torture and forced labor in the communist state.

“When I was a nomad, people were just astonished about North Korea,” Garrard said. “They don’t know the personal stories of people who live in North Korea.”

Likewise, those stories are “astonishing,” she said.

North Korean refugees live in fear in China, because that nation has a policy of repatriating them to their homeland, where they face severe reprisals and possible death for fleeing their homeland.

Up to 90 percent of the North Korean women who attempt to flee are exploited in China with many “sold into the sex trade,” LiNK maintains.

“Stateless” children born to North Korean women who marry Chinese men, sometimes under duress, run the risk of being abandoned or exploited.

LiNK nomads and the film attempt to tell these stories to an audience with little understanding of the harrowing existence in North Korea that drives refugees to take massive risks to find freedom.

“It’s an hour of somebody’s time,” Garrard said. “It’s a small sacrifice to come out to a screening and hear stories that aren’t told.

“They can become an active member of the global community and … really be inspired that if we act together we can create freedom for North Korean refugees.”

Veteran journalist Nick Green is the beat reporter for the cities of Torrance, Carson and Lomita and also covers the South Bay's rapidly growing craft beer industry for the Daily Breeze. He has worked for newspapers on the West Coast since graduating in 1987 from the University of Washington and lives in Old Torrance with his wife and two cats. Follow him on Twitter @NickGreen007 and @BeerGogglesLA.